Fact Check: Enhancing Vocabulary Retention Challenges and Solutions

becoming more articulate and learning new words is challenging I have a poor memory I don't have good retention with

words that I want to assimilate and employ in my speaking I came up with a chart the other day that depicts this

Challenge and I found two solutions that have started to implement that have changed the way that I am able to

memorize words and create a more efficient process let me show this to you in these next few minutes everyone

has a recognition vocabulary this is often called your Lexicon and your Lexicon is simply a term used in

linguistics to refer to your personal vocabulary you likely have heard of society's lexicon the words that are out

there being used employed by people in society this serve this recognition vocabulary which I'm going to abbreviate

is RV is roughly for the average adult native English speaker 35 000 words this is divided into two parts

and these two parts are not drawn to scale so I just need to draw this big enough so I can fit something inside of

here this top part of the word bank that you personally have is called your surface lexicon your surface lexicon

because it's at the top of your recognition vocabulary you also have your deep lexicon your surface lexicon

is comprised of roughly 1500 words these are the words that make up in most situations 90 of what you say

you use the same words the same unique words over and over again how often do you say good great amazing you overwork

these are often called Workhorse words you overwork them to the point of exhaustion and many of us have our nasty

language habits that we could learn to prune these words 1500 are the words you use

on a daily basis your deep lexicon these words are words that you recognize but you don't often default to for example

if you were fine dining at a restaurant and you ordered a delicious steak and I asked you how was your steak you might

reply by saying the steak was good the stick was great of course you recognize the words tasty Savory Gourmet delicious

but those words are not the words you default to as your first descriptors for a steak even though they are more

profound and expressive because they are deep in your deep lexicon and you can think of sort of a parallel scale here

that ranks the frequency of the word these words in your surface lexicon are registering in your surface lexicon

because they're frequently employed in your speech it's like you've created these synapses these neural Pathways

this mental vocabulary muscle memory that has reinforced these words when you learn a new word say the word is

insulated for example the problem is that that word goes directly into your deep lexicon now if

you've only used it once or twice or you've repeated the word a few times in order to know how it's pronunciated it's

going to be pretty far down in your your deep lexicon how can we take a word like Savory for example we'll use this as an

illustration Savory how can you take Savory and move it up into your surface lexicon how do we give the word more

buoyancy there are really three ways we can do this the first is through vocal repetition through frequency of usage

through volume of using the word there was a study by Cornell University in which they studied children ages I

believe 12 to 16 who were learning new vocabulary these were high schoolers and it took them on average roughly 38 times

of using the word uniquely not back to back not saying Savory Savory Savory Savory using Savory and distinct and

properly contextual instances in order for that word to become a word that they would be again to default to on a daily

basis using a word 38 times keep that number in your head the second way is through giving yourself more time to

index your recognition vocabulary think of this like Google every time that you pause before you speak you're allowing

your brain to interact deeper deeper into this vast Bank of word knowledge that you have to retrieve words that

perhaps are more descriptive and expressive for what you want to convey when we often jump the gun and speak on

autopilot whatever is on the tip of our tongue is and we recognize this not the best way that we can say things that's

the second solution the word will be more accessible the more time you give yourself to think before you say things

the final solution that I've started to employ more is to create a heuristic associated with the word a

heuristic is something that is associated with the word that is visual for example if the word is Savory I

might think of a stake and I might create other images that the word Savory can apply to and it's creating these

scenarios in which when you find yourself in those environments that you've mapped out in your mind the word

will make itself more obvious you can't disassociate with the word and just see it as this blob of black text and then

expect yourself to remember it it can't be on paper you need to give yourself roots in your mind associated with this

word so when you find yourself in those situations the word becomes an option in your surface lexicon I

often have found creating three images associated with the word and these can be contexts for example they can be

sentences if the word isn't visual like Savory might be visual the word can be insulated or in decorous for example

which are two words that I'm trying to incorporate into my speech and I have specific images associated with these

words that I've written out in a sentence and it's helped me memorize it better this was a light bulb moment for

me when I understood how my brain retrieves information and this is a graph that I just thought up one

afternoon so let me know your thoughts on this and I hope it was helpful